This invention relates generally to devices for handling hay bales and cartons, and more specifically to apparatus for breaking down stacks of bales or cartons and feeding them singularly and alternatively to other handling apparatus.
In recent years, the art of handling hay bales and cartons has become increasingly mechanized. Numerous devices now exist for picking up hay bales in the field and forming them into convenient sized stacks which are tied together by the bales being in different position orientation. These convenient sized stacks, generally called cubes, are then moved about with forklift type trucks equipped with the squeeze arms. The cubes are loaded and unloaded on highway trailers and are themselves stacked together to make large haystacks for storage. Large hay users such as dairies, cattle feed lots, and pellet mills typically inventory their hay in stacks.
Efforts to mechanize the feeding of hay from such bale stacks has also made progress. Machines have been developed to de-bale hay bale by breaking off the wires and breaking or chopping the bale for easy use of feeding. No truly effective devices have yet been developed, however, for breaking the bale cubes down into single bales oriented in such a way that they can be conveniently fed to the de-baler. This work is still largely done by hand.
Since it is sometimes desirable to mix or intersperse bales of different kinds of hay, mechanization of the destacking operation is further complicated. Cartons are also assembled into stacks, frequently on pallets, so they can be readily handled in packing houses and factories. Again effective mechanization is not yet available for breaking down a carton stack into a line of single commonly oriented units.
It is, therefore, a major object of my invention to provide an apparatus for breaking down a stack of bales or cartons into single units all oriented in like positions regardless of their orientation in the stack.
It is also an important object of my invention to provide a destacker of the type described which will operate on cubes of hay bales formed by nearly all commonly used bale stackers.
It is a further object of my invention to provide a destacker of the type described in which the final orientation of the bales or cartons is achieved by a gravity chute, thereby minimizing the power requirement.
It is still another object of my invention to provide a destacker of the type described which operates with sufficient speed to produce a continuous run of single like-oriented articles.
It is yet another object of my invention to provide a destacker of the type described which can be paired with a like unit and a common orienting chute whereby bales from the second unit may be destacked and interspersed with bales from the first unit.
It is still a further object of my invention to provide a destacker of the type described which is of rugged construction and substantially maintenance free.